Mobile phones will be taken away from Belarusian schoolchildren

In the new academic year, students will be banned from using mobile phones in educational institutions. They will be withdrawn until the end of the lessons. Officials claim that the decision was made at the request of the parents. There will be other innovations in the educational process. For example, individual entrepreneurs are now prohibited from organizing preschool education.

Starting from September 1, Belarusian students will have to part with their mobile phones when entering the school. This was reported on Tuesday morning in a news release on the STV TV channel. The presenter explained that the purpose of such an innovation is for children to devote more time to live communication and study. It is assumed that the guys will leave their mobile phones in special cells.

The information in the frame was commented by the Minister of Education of Belarus Andrei Ivanets: “Currently, the job descriptions have already identified the relevant employees who will be responsible for the safety of these phones. But here we can be very calm, because almost all schools in our country are equipped with video surveillance. Accordingly, these cells will be installed near the surveillance cameras. Even in the absence of employees, we will be able to gain access to those who could approach these cells in the future.”

In Belarusian schools, the use of mobile phones during lessons has been prohibited for several years. And this norm is fixed in the State School Standard. Withdrawal has not been fixed, but nevertheless it will now be widely practiced.

BelTA news agency quotes a comment from the press service of the Ministry of Education: “Today we see a request from parents who advocate restricting the use of mobile phones not only during training sessions, but also in general in educational institutions of our country. Moms and dads are concerned that modern children are addicted to gadgets: they do not want to communicate, they tend to use Internet prompts while completing tasks. A generation is growing up that is experiencing certain communication difficulties. Therefore, we plan that from September 1, children will have the opportunity to donate mobile phones to specially equipped places for the entire period of their stay at school.”

Thus, the government, as always, promptly responded to the “requests of the workers.” However, some officials refer not only to this seemingly irrefutable argument, but also to foreign experience as justification for such radical measures.

For example, Nikolai Bashko, head of the Main Department for Education of the Ministry of the Executive Committee, commented on the ban on mobile phones on the pages of the Minskaya Pravda newspaper: “No matter what anyone says, everyone recognizes that the information a child receives from a phone today is uncontrolled. It’s not for nothing that many prestigious educational institutions are canceling not only phones, but also other electronics such as televisions, tablets, and computers. Visual posters, tutorials, whiteboard, chalk, and live communication are more conducive to learning than electronics. Even in Australia, which is very far from “civilization,” phones have long been banned in schools.”

However, of course, Belarusian officials know how to manage the educational process without Australia. Speaking about other innovations, Bashko noted that a new edition of the Education Code will come into force on September 1. Among the innovations, he noted the following: “Individual entrepreneurs will be prohibited from participating in the implementation of educational programs for preschool and special education. They will only be able to engage in additional adult education. The need for this innovation is due to the fact that in practice, individual entrepreneurs have opened private preschool institutions under various covers. The crest of the wave of public interest in this problem has already subsided, and today few people remember 2023, when private institutions of general secondary and preschool education underwent a serious audit by the state, after which, without obtaining a proper license for this type of activity, they ceased to exist. Now, with the adoption of the new Code, such a rule is enshrined in law.”

Despite the fact that officials are doing an excellent job of creating new regulatory standards, the problem that they have not yet found a solution to is that, in fact, there are fewer and fewer regulatory objects. The demographic situation in the country is such that educational institutions have to be closed simply because there are not enough children to fill them.

“Unfortunately, the factor of general demography is inextricably linked with the so-called child demography. Over the past three years, the number of children in pre-school educational institutions has been decreasing. And we must understand that the next stage is now coming, when the shortage of preschoolers is moving to institutions of general secondary education,” Bashko admitted.

And the official told us what measures we have to take in this regard.: “After a detailed analysis of the network of pre-school and general secondary education institutions with a view to 2032, the General Directorate for Education of the Ministry of Executive Committee, in coordination with the Ministry of Education, is expected to withdraw 20 institutions from the network: 14 pre-school and 6 general secondary education, including through the liquidation of 11 pre-school and 4 institutions of general secondary education. Another half dozen educational institutions will be reorganized by joining each other.”